Orban is one of eleven foreign politicians and public figures valued by Czechs, according to a survey published on Thursday on August 8 by a poll conducted by STEM in Prague.
The most popular foreign politician is Slovak President Zuzana Caputova (71 percent), the second is Pope Francis (63 percent), while Viktor Orban obtained 48 percent in the poll.
In its article HVG.hu noted that the least popular foreign politicians seem to be US President Donald Trump (24 percent), European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (24 percent) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (18 percent).
Three years ago Orban was only the sixth most popular foreign leader.
Following the top three on this list, were Theresa May, former British Prime Minister who was still in office at the time of the survey, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who received a positive rating of 36 percent.
Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski received (35 percent), while German Chancellor Angela Merkel was almost tied with Trump at 25.
Migration is still the major issue for Czechs, according to the results of the European Commission’s biannual Eurobarometer public opinion survey.
Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European history at Oxford University, said Orban’s rising popularity was due to his immigration policies. “You now have a major European party endorsing the Orban programme on migration.”
While thirty-four percent of European respondents in the new survey viewed immigration as the most pressing problem, the issue topped the list of issues in 21 member states, with the Czech Republic, Malta, Estonia, Slovenia and the Netherlands scoring the highest proportion of negative responses.
Denmark, Sweden and Finland were the countries most consumed with climate change.
Czechs have been among the eurosceptical nations within the EU since 46 percent of them believe that EU membership is neither good nor bad, according to a poll conducted by the Eurobarometer in April this year.
At the same time 62 percent of Czechs share the view that the Czech Republic benefits from EU membership.
In the April survey, Czechs said the security topic was important since 55 percent of them considered the fight against terrorism a major issue. And linked to that, some 53 percent believe migration was a problem and 51 percent said the protection of the EU’s outer border should be improved.